The best images force us to reconsider how we think the world works and looks (and are also visually arresting, of course). Such shots often show a feat or a discovery, but they can also underscore the scope and reality of ongoing or looming disasters.

As we speed toward the New Year, we rounded up some of our favorite photos of 2018. Take a look.

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Scientists discovered a new type of aurora earlier this year. They named it STEVE, an acronym for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.

This aurora appears much closer to the equator than the northern lights, or aurora borealis.

Amateur sky-watchers first observed the strange lights in Southern Canada three years ago. They later collaborated with NASA, and the group's findings were published in March.

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Each year, the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council puts on a science photography competition. This year's winner was a stunning photo of a single positively charged atom of strontium.

In the center of the image lurks a solitary atom of strontium, which is re-emitting purple-colored light. The distance between the needles is about two millimeters.
David Nadlinger/University of Oxford/EPSRC

The photo shows a glow of light emitted by an atom that's trapped by magnetic fields and laser light. It was taken by David Nadlinger from the University of Oxford.

While you can't see anything atomic-sized without incredibly advanced imaging techniques, digital cameras can capture the photons (or particles of light) that are absorbed and re-emitted by atoms.

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Photographers also documented devastating natural disasters throughout 2018. In the fall, astronauts in space managed to take pictures of the fearsome hurricanes that battered the US East Coast.

As the Woolsey Fire engulfed Malibu, California in November, Los Angeles Times photographer Wally Skalij took an eerie photo of an owl on the city's beach.

An owl sits on the beach in Malibu, California as the Woolsey Fire approaches on November 9, 2018.
Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The Woolsey Fire killed three people and burned nearly 100,000 acres of land.

Skalij's photo of the owl has been shared widely on social media over the past month, but the photographer told NPR that he did not expect it to become so popular.

"My mind is racing 100 miles an hour because this house is burning up in the hills, and I know I have to get pictures of the firefighters battling that," Skalij said about taking photos on the Malibu beach during the wildfire. "I'm glad I pulled back a little bit to get a little more sense of what was going on away from the flames."

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At least 1,700 people were killed in September following a deadly earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. The woman pictured below lost her three children and home due to the disaster.

A woman holds a stuffed rabbit toy after it was found at her destroyed home, where she said she had lost her three children, in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, on October 7, 2018.
Jorge Silva/Reuters

Underwood's case was also notable because it marked the shortest period of time between a patient's injury and the transplant procedure.

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A photo published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month shows a bronchial tree-shaped blood clot that came out of a patient's mouth in an "extreme" coughing fit. The 36-year-old man passed away soon after.

The man had been admitted to the intensive care unit due a sudden worsening of chronic heart failure symptoms. Doctors had put the patient on blood thinners after he received a mechanical heart pump, but the medication was ineffective at stopping the clot from forming.

"Not all people appreciate small species, particularly insects," Yousef Al Habshi, the winning photographer, said in a press release. "Through photomicrography we can find a whole new, beautiful world which hasn't been seen before. It's like discovering what lies under the ocean's surface."

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This photo also won a prestigious prize. It shows thousands of recalled Volkswagen and Audi vehicles sitting in the Mojave Desert, years after it was revealed that the car manufacturer was cheating on emissions tests.

"Models manufactured from 2009 to 2015 were designed to cheat emissions tests mandated by the US Environmental Protection Agency," Todorov said. "Following the scandal, Volkswagen recalled millions of cars. By capturing scenes like this one, I hope we will all become more conscious of and more caring toward our beautiful planet."

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The top prize in National Geographic's 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year contest went to this underwater view of a humpback whale calf's scuffed-up tail.

"Most of the time, the calf stayed close to her mom. At one point, the calf began jumping and tapping its tail on the water near us — it was very friendly and curious," Takahashi said. "Finally, the mother, who was watching nearby, came to pick up the calf and swim away. I fell in love completely with the calf and its very energetic, large, and beautiful tail."

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Other memorable images from 2018 captured the year's biggest science news. In the US' midterm elections in November, Americans voted 10 new scientists and engineers into Congress (one senator and nine House reps).

Congressional candidate Kim Schrier addresses the crowd at an election night party for Democrats on November 6, 2018 in Bellevue, Washington.
Elaine Thompson/AP

The Democratic candidates who won all received support from 314 Action, a nonprofit political action committee focused on recruiting, training, and funding scientists and healthcare workers who are interested in running for office.

Kim Schrier, a pediatrician from Washington (shown here), was elected to represent Washington's 8th district in the House of Representatives.

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The successful arrival of NASA's InSight lander on Mars was a major success for the agency. InSight took its first selfie on the red planet in early December, showing off its solar panels and scientific instruments.

NASA's InSight lander takes a selfie on Mars in December 2018.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Other remarkable images from space came after the debut of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. Tech mogul Elon Musk demonstrated the system's power in February by blasting his own Tesla Roadster into space with a spacesuit-clad dummy called "Starman."

Several cameras on the Roadster led to images that were arguably more incredible than any taken of Falcon Heavy itself (which is currently the world's most powerful rocket).

The footage gave unprecedented views of the car and Starman against the backdrop of Earth and the inky black void of space. The visuals seemed unbelievable at times, but astronomers verified that the car was indeed up there.

SpaceX rocketed the sports car toward the orbit of Mars, to the annoyance of NASA's planetary protection office.

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This time-lapse image of a SpaceX rocket launch is also remarkable, since it shows the company's as-yet unmatched capability of recovering orbital rocket boosters.

This photo shows a Falcon 9 rocket launching the SAOCOM-1 satellite into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base on October 8, 2018.

What's remarkable is that the time-lapse picture captured all stages of the launch.

The bright streak on the bottom right in the photo is from the blast-off, while the cloud at the top is the moment the rocket's upper-stage separated from the booster. Then the thin blue arc of exhaust is the 16-story-tall booster flying back, and the booster's landing burn is the shorter streak to the right of the central launch arc.

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This image shows a less recent event: a "hybrid" solar eclipse on November 3, 2013. The picture is actually is a series of five photos stacked together; the collage was submitted to the Royal Society's 2018 photography contest — and it won.

The award-winning picture is titled "Three Diamonds in the Sky" and was shot by photographer Petr Horálek from Pakwero, Uganda.

This eclipse Horálek captured was a hybrid — not total eclipse or annular eclipse — due to where he was standing on Earth.

Some points on our round world are physically closer to the moon, and at those closer points, the moon's umbra or central shadow drops perfectly on Earth's surface. At more distant locations, however, the physics of refraction cause the moon's shadow to flip. This leads to leading to unusual lighting effects at those spots on our planet.

The next hybrid solar eclipse will occur in April 2023 over western Australia and Indonesia, Horálek said in a press release.

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NASA's Juno spacecraft took this incredible series of Jupiter images on April 1, 2018. A few months later, NASA decided to extend the $1 billion mission.

At the pinnacle of the long loop, Juno speeds close to Jupiter's north pole going 130,000 mph, then moves along its surface and over the south pole. These flybys have led to numerous scientific revelations.

This series of images shows the last half of Juno's 12th perijove, and it includes views of Jupiter's south pole and Great Red Spot.

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The Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year honors those who look up, and this picture — which could easily pass for a sci-fi view from an alien planet — won the contest in 2018.

The photo shows the Milky Way galaxy (right), moon (center), and the tripod-wielding astrophotographer himself (left) perched on the lip of a desert canyon in Moab, Utah.

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Other scenes from 2018 look alien in different ways, and contain dark truths. This award-winning shot shows Iran's evaporating Urmia Lake. Drought, damming, and irrigation have decimated the ecosystem by creating water eight times saltier than seawater.

Saeed Mohammadzadeh won the 2018 Environmental Photographer of the Year competition held by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. His picture reveals how human activity can inadvertently destroy treasured local resources.

"Climate change is intensifying the droughts that speed up evaporation in the region. The lake has also been suffering from illegal wells and a proliferation of dams and irrigation projects causing it to reduce significantly in volume," Mohammadzadeh said in a release. "Noxious, salt-tinged dust storms inflame the eyes, skin, and lungs of residents in surrounding areas."

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Many of Earth's creatures are threatened by human activity, including elephants. This image earned a certificate of merit in the 2018 Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards.

The annual contest highlights beautiful and often gut-wrenching wildlife shots, many of which reveal the human-created dangers that animals face.

Called "Impossible Odds," this photo by Biplap Hazra shows an adult elephant and a calf trying to cross railway tracks in West Bengal. The picture is part of an ongoing series in which Hazra documents threats to elephants' way of life.

"Here in the Bankura district, beleaguered herds desperately navigate a landscape that would be unrecognizable to their fore-mothers," the contest's organizers wrote about the photo. "The railway authorities didn't consider their ancient pathways when they laid this track, and every year a memory's worth of elephants is wiped out by speeding trains."

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Not all great nature photos need to be serious or solemn, though. Photographing wildlife often leads to humorous situations — a fact that the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards bank on.